Nature has a frightening variety of toxins that humans have adapted for their own purposes: first to hunt prey for food, and also to kill their human enemies. For example, take the strychnos tree, from which we get strychnine.

Most of us have heard of strychnos owing to its use in rat poison – as well as the occasional murder! – but it has been used for centuries as an arrow poison in the jungles of Assam, Burma, Malaysia and Java. A chieftain of the Limba people of Sierra Leone is holding iron-tipped arrows dipped in strychnos poison in the image above. The seeds contain 1.5% strychnine, but the flowers and bark contain the poison too. People and animals exposed to the substance will suffer paralysis, severe convulsions and, finally, death. On the plus side, medical science has used it in minute doses to help people as well.

Read about seven of these traditional poisons at Environmental Graffiti. Link